POETRY ARCHIVE

Paraparaumu

for several summers we camped therecanvas tents cheek by jowl guy-ropesoverlapping with our neighbours Jack &Ray & their three girls my fatherclosed the shop from Christmas Evetill after New Year always it rainedfor Christmas we’d dig a trench around the tent & sit it outwhen not afloatin sea flattened like a pitted riverby the rain I kissed a boyone year but that was not particularlymemorable rain dribbling downlike snot into our mouths somedays there was entertainmentfor us kids in the hall the timethat I recall they showed Charlie Chaplinshorts black & white on a cranky reel-to-reel projector all the windowsblacked while we sat cross-leggedon the floor Mum sneaked inthe back she’d always loveddear Charlie his rendition ofthe common-place the wistful comedy of tragedy I’d never seen his filmsbefore & from the door she heardmy laugh above the rest roaringin the darkness – his walk the wayhis moustache twitched his little fingerraised while drinking tea or while he suckeda cobbler’s nail now when I think of itI know her heart was laughing there wasso little in her life to laugh about all duty & hard work a husbandwhose insides were shortened bitby bit it must have been a joy to seeshe’d given such a sense of glee to me

​Way point

at that pointwhere blue meets bluea line scriven in distancecurved the point of vanishing& reappearance a softribbon-of-line bendingin supplication to winds

at that point will I find you plied with night & I will singin strains so high only godsmay hear but with each breathnotes will enter pervade your fleshset up a vibration such a pluckingof strings you summon no resistance

An earlier form of this poem was the winner of the 2014 Poems4Peace Competition and published by Printable Reality.

Taking Tea

In this gentle dusk, I watch the lightgleam in your eye, the tenderturn of gaze, the set of chin,and I pause as I pass a teacup,black with gold rim, an elegant handle.Green tea – it’s that o’clock.

Loud I hear the tick of the clockthat has governed your life,as you struggle to handlethe stillness of being, accept that the tenderbud of contentment can float in a teacupor on curve of horizon as tight as a skin.

Sun’s over the yardarm.Chin-chin!– now: tea. Would you turn back the clock,weather again the squalls and the make-ups …From under the cloud slips evening light;brief fires of sunset ignite the tender.Ocean-swell; you angle

your glance, blink, grasp any handle;struggle to keep your chinabove water. Take in the fender, don’t notice the clock marking your solitude; slightshift in wind and you’ll take up

an inner space, like grief scouring a tunnel for a river of present participles

and past, a constant roar. They climb upaway from the cave, over a lip of hill

the river abruptly silenced. Walk awaysaying nothing, drive away.

First published in the NZ Poetry Society 2014 anthology Take Back the Sky.

Way Pointat that point where blue meets blue,a line scriven in distance curved, the point of vanishing and reappearance, a soft ribbon of line bending in supplication to winds; at that point will I find you, plied with night and I will sing in strains so high onlygods may hear; but with each breath notes will enter, pervade your flesh, set up a vibration, such a plucking of strings you summon no resistance and as your ship breaks on my shoreI shall draw you to me, throughdangerous waters into calm

This poem won first prize in the 2014 Poems4Peace competition; first published in the anthology Poems4Peace (Printable Reality, August 2014)

The Close of Day

We cut a path through air crazed by glinting sun, glass splinters which refract, distort the view. Trees loom then fall away, open to the ragged shore; short waves collapse like conversation; gannets plunge into the sea’s unruly back.

The last of day dies in puddles: low rayssneak beneath a gloom of cloud; marram grass drips pearls. Everythingseems else, and you are lodged in melike a knife Yes, this

is what I thought old age to be, the coin of passage cold in hand; hovering on the point of departure, at the tattered edges of it all Only the dust of the dead scattered

Done After the day, half through the night she treadled her Singer sewing machine, the treads of stairs inclined above her head – her sewing room, she said; her space: shelves of reels and thread, lace and tailor’s chalk, folded felt, taffeta, gauze; the radio announcer’s talk to keep her company.

Brrmm! the shuttle shot back and forth propelled by the synchrony of feet. Powerful calves. Fingers turning tiny hems. Push, pull. Guiding straight, straight, straight. Brrmm! Done. Undone, redone On the kitchen table, she sketched her visions on newsprint; stitched them first from thread- bare sheets. Bears, dolls. Done, undone, redone Jointed teddies from nylon fur, panda bears with friendly faces. The shape of snout, the look – critical. The Cowboy smiled at precisely the right angle. Little Red Riding Hood, orb of eye wide with innocence, surprise. Done, undone. Redone The tread of metal shook the night, entered dreams, assured the world was right. Delights in sharkskin, crepe or lawn. A party dress perhaps, across my bed at dawn. Done. Undone. Redone

There is a moment, somewhere, when I see you. Truly see you. A gift. Before a glass, a Renaissance self- portrait. Maybe in a courtyard, a Gothic arch

or by a Roman column – the old so new – unruly curls snaking, your father’s smile, Sicilian sun. A fishing harbour, gulls rising through blue, many steps, and you carry my burden. Ionian light and Jason searching for himself.

Or perhaps in relief against a white wall; always white walls. Blue-and-white tiles and men mending nets. The voice of the market. Bull-fight roar in the wind.

Twin iron beds in a whitewashed room. A fan to cut hot heavy air. A small table: bread on white paper, a knife beside cheese, sharing stories and red wine thicker than water.

heel to toe, you step the lines of street, searching for real: flesh and blood. Dust-laden air drums an echo, the body an album.

Mannequins lean, odd angles, exposed to the elements. Eyes fixed. Heaped glass and bricks.A neon tube glimmers in Quinn’s upper storey. You walked out alive – you are still in your body.Pinned in the rubble, a scrap of silk flutters; a cat slinks low, seeks the way home.

your birthday you who thought you knew me better than myself know me no longer though I know you still round and round like this globeof apple red for love and green for loving slice by slice a name carved in singular fashion I count the death of years in decades in the heart of winter the vacant place in mine remains your firstborn older now than you still I’m your daughter same hair fine and disobedient the nails the crooked middle finger words punning to cliché sun-glance on water shine onharvest moon / January February June

It was the rays that drove her across the world to a land she believed unplagued by electrons, by air thick with ionic detritus that charges rogue cells to spawn their malign likeness, addles heart, brain, liver, spleen, crushing the meek and healthy. It had been the dishes on the roof – their electron-swords piercing the ceiling. Inescapable. The kitchen, the bedroom, the duvet pulled over her head. They found her. She saw their invisible shimmer through industrial fog. She trembled in her lounge, waiting

to ring her daughters – again – to explain – again – her need to escape. No one listened. She pulled her soft sunhat over her ears for protection and studied the world on tremulous pages … She explained all this in the far-off green land, a place she could wander in silks and in lace, like a bride stepping out, a new life beginning, safe, she thought, without hat or umbrella. She slept with no fear of ionic invasion. All this she told and asked for asylum. They came, in the end, not the rays but the men, and sent her away, searching again. Her sunhat regretfully lost in transition. There

I scoop them from the ground, soft carpet of detritus, searching for the firm and yellowing green. Each sits in my palm. Fulsome. I cup cold fingers around another, half buried, find the underside a squish of brown, and let it lie. The last of the summer crop hangs tempting from above, but I’ve been sent to gather windfalls and make the best of them. I shall excise all wounded flesh, make pear and walnut chutney in my mother’s pan, wait six weeks to know whether bruised fruit can be rescued.

Your daughter wants to learn to make Christmas cake. She has returned to the fold of your apron, infant latched to her nipple. Hormones surge with every suck. She yearns to be the great earth-mother, greater even than you. She eschews an apron.

Weather or Not The thing about living on an island is the weather: there’s lots of it. A friend from England (the ‘Home’ island) says conversation in New Zealand is almost entirely about the weather. You wouldn’t think there’d be such a difference – not so you’d notice – England being an island, too, up there near the Arctic winds and storms. But that’s not the direction which prevails, and England is tied to a great land mass by the EU to ensure stability; plenty of hot air blows from that direction. However …

Here you have only to step outside and there’s the weather. It might not be what you expected, but there it is. It may not be what was forecast, but there it is. It may not be what it will be in a minute, or what it was a minute ago. Its very ephemeral nature, you could say, invites comment, speculation, as if still we tilled the soil, laid crops to dry, paddled out in waka to set our nets. Now we seed the soil with industrial estates, drink our wine dry, and paddle our own canoes. Yet still we talk about the weather.

Our islands run north to south, like a string bean; catch tropical weather at the top and at the tail sub-Antarctic. Almost before weather arrives it has passed over, Tasman to Pacific. We talk about it, exclaim, never cease to be amazed by the commonplace: ‘Three seasons in one day!’ Stewart Island, the gem in the tail – nowhere else so much weather; it flits by like time-phase photography. Fulminating. Shafts of sunlight. Walls of rain. Lightning. Wind. Warning us to beware, prepare, take care of the land, go home – and talk about the weather.